You're out and about. You have a smartphone or an iPad with you, and you want to use the internet. Cellular reception is slow, patchy and unreliable, so you really need to track down the nearest wifi hotspot as soon as possible.

Or, you're about to go out and about. You know roughly where you're going, so you want to look up details of local wifi hotspots before you go. And ideally you want to know whether they're free to use and, if not, which ones are run by a company whose hotspots you have an account with.

This well-respected database of WiFi hotspots has around 102 million entries in its database. Just type in the address of where you're looking, and wait for the map to appear. It's free to use, and works with all major web browsers.

To browse the database online, no download is necessary. If you wish, there's also a download manager available, which you can install on your laptop to help you locate hotspots. Plus, if it finds hotspots that aren't in the central database, it helps the wefi community by uploading the details.

Although this article is not primarily a review of the downloadable Windows wefi app, I have checked that app with Virus Total and it appears to be clean and trustworthy.